By Talia Gerard
Opinion Editor
Vaccines are crucial in keeping 2,500 Mira Costa students healthy throughout the entirety of the school year. Students spend approximately 35 hours at school per week, and without mandatory vaccines, many students would be left vulnerable to communicable diseases. Vaccines should be mandatory to students attending public school because it is a decision that not only effects the individual child, but those around them.
Most families are not educated enough in medicine to decide whether or not to vaccinate their children. Parents should ensure that their children get all required vaccines and trust the regulations put in place by MBUSD and created to protect entire school populations.
According to the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, side effects from vaccinations are extremely rare. Researchers have found that there is no correlation between vaccinations and diseases such as autism or childhood leukemia as some believe.
The same study found that while there is a small possibility of a side effect occurring, such as a serious allergic reaction, one to two people out of a million have severe reactions, while the rest have nothing but minimal tenderness and swelling. Even in these rare instances, the vaccine is not to blame as it is usually caused by poor health in the patient. Staying healthy outweighs the slim possibility of getting a side effect from the vaccine.
The National Vaccine Program Office of Health and Human Services states that enforcing all students to be vaccinated causes herd immunity, a situation in which an entire community is immunized to mitigate the likelihood of an outbreak. This is the safest way to prevent against diseases in the community, and Costa should aim to reach herd immunity by convincing students and parents to be vaccinated.
Due to the surge in misinformation that the vaccine for mumps, measles, and rubella may lead to autism, according to Time magazine, there was a nationwide increase in the number of parents obtaining personal belief exemptions.
According to the California Department of Public Health, Pacific Elementary School has 92 percent of students vaccinated; Meadows has 94 percent; Robinson has 97 percent and Grandview and Pennekamp have 98 percent of their students vaccinated. This majority allows for a decreased chance for diseases throughout the community.
According to the New York Times, if 95 percent of a community has been vaccinated, the whole community would be safe. By requiring medically able students to be vaccinated, the immunized majority would protect those who cannot be vaccinated.
Students who are unvaccinated based on religious and moral beliefs should be able to maintain their personal belief exemption as long as a majority of students are vaccinated as herd immunization would keep students safe.
Most of the population gets immunized every year for common diseases like influenza. CVS and other drug stores offer free flu shots in order to offer an easy way to maintain public health.
According to the U.S. Center of Disease Control and Prevention, all vaccines are not 100 percent effective, but most routine childhood vaccines are effective for 85 to 95 percent of recipients. People should take the time to get vaccinated because they are protecting not only themselves, but also the entire school population.
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